5 Things That Have Gotten Better Since The Financial Crisis (And 5 That Haven’t)

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When the financial giant Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy protection on September 15, 2008, the United States had been in a recession for nearly a year.

Within days, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve was on Capitol Hill demanding $700 million to unstop the nation’s credit markets. America’s economic engine was frozen, thanks to a decade of deregulation and under-regulation that had led to the proliferation of “financial weapons of mass destruction,” as Warren Buffett called derivatives in 2002.

The costs of the crisis can be measured in trillions of dollars or millions of homes and jobs. But the human tragedy can also be counted in escalating suicides as well as painfully technocratic terms like “wasted human capital.”

Today, five years later, the situation is unquestionably improved. But the improvements have been too small, too limited, and too slow.